“I HAVE no idea who that man is.” “Isn’t he the guy who put something into space and it crash-landed?” “He’s the bloke who believes in sharia law”. These were three of the Mancunian voces pop quoted at the start of a Radio 4 programme on Tuesday of last week about . . . you guessed it, our dear Archbishop.
Of course, we do not know whether Quentin Letts — presenter of What’s the Point of . . . the Archbishop of Canterbury — edited out those who answered: “Of course! That’s the Primate of All England, Metropolitan Archbishop of the diocese of Canterbury . . .”, but it is still a depressing state of affairs for the incumbent of a post that is supposedly ranked third in the country.
All this Mr Letts pored over with the glee of a hardened political sketch-writer, and there was not a great deal in this half-hour to make the C of E faithful any more comfortable. Dr Susan Blackmore did her professional-atheist turn, demanding that humanity replace faith with reason — “It’s a long haul for humans, but we’ll do it” — as if she were a motivational speaker at some humanist Outward Bound weekend.
The Labour MP and former curate Chris Bryant put the boot in by declaring that Cardinal Basil Hume had earned his position as de facto Christian leader in Britain, whereas Dr Williams . . . The sentence needed no conclusion.
Even the Bishop of Norwich, the Rt Revd Graham James, in presenting an intelligent apology for the office of Archbishop, was made to sound naïve. The way in which the Archbishop exercises authority is, he said, a worthy, albeit flawed, experiment. That was not good enough for Mr Letts, who sounded as if he was much more at ease with the moral certainty of tabloid editors than with the intellectual sophistication and ambiguity of C of E apologists.
The Archbishop, he said, was like a distant, comforting parent to the nation — to be relied upon in times of crisis, and otherwise ignored. I get the sense that Mr Letts would prefer the parent who would give a good wallop with the slipper.
In times of crisis, the country also seeks out hard patricians. Witness Enoch Powell in 1968: his “rivers of blood” speech had workers across the country out on strike in support. In the fascinating 1968: Rivers of blood — the real source (Radio 4, Monday of last week), Rob Shepherd investigated Mr Powell’s motivations, short- and long-term.
One of Mr Powell’s more immediate considerations was his relationship with Ted Heath and the Shadow Cabinet, who were left bewildered and hugely embarrassed. There had been no indication of Mr Powell’s intentions, and even the chairman of the Wolverhampton Conservatives, whom Mr Powell was addressing, knew nothing until the television cameras arrived.
Mr Powell’s private letters, however, reveal a consistency of thought on the immigration issue dating back to experiences in post-war India. The violence of partition convinced Mr Powell that those who possessed tribal allegiances of such intensity were incapable of accepting democracy. And, in a confidential memo from a friend in the Punjab, dated 1947, we find the Latin quotation that reappeared 20 years later: “Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.”
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